fredart : blogbits

As most of you know, i use Adobe Illustrator (version 10 right now - i haven’t upgraded to CS or CS2 yet) and Photoshop (currently 7.0) for all of my work on Megatokyo. Great applications really, and i really like the way they work on the Mac platform. That is, until i finally upgraded to Tiger. That’s when the problems started.

After upgrading to Tiger, there were two things that became a problem. For some reason, it didn’t like my Epson 1280 printer (easily solved by getting a Epson Photo R300 - the 1280 was a wonky printer anyway, the R300 is much nicer) and Illustrator started crashing. A lot.

After a while i was able to discern that the problem always happened whenever i switched from Photoshop to Illustrator. Errors would pop up “the PDF file is having difficulties” and other things, which would quite often result in not only Illustrator shutting down, but Photoshop as well. I’ve been tearing my hair out over this for months, but today i think i finally discovered the problem. This is what i found while searching for answers about the problem:

“If you copy an object from Adobe Illustrator 10.0.3 and try to paste it into Photoshop 7.0.1 in Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”, then Adobe Illustrator will crash and Photoshop will be unable to get the contents of the clipboard.”

Here is a link to the page - its down near the bottom where this comment is made. They say that if you turn off the copy PDF to clipboard the problem goes away. Gee, it did. How about that. Nice to finally have that problem solved. Here’s another link to info on it.

There is still one more problem that i think will not go away as a result of this fix, and i have read that its a problem with CS as well as 10. (there is something about this on MacOSXHints.com but i can’t reach the site for some reason to find the exact link)… anyways, an annoying problem that is cropping up now is that because of some kind of problem with Spotlight, Illustrator can’t delete the temporary files it creates, and as a result im ending up with tons of files named 049554934.pdf etc… at first i thought that the two problems were related, but it seems this isn’t the case. I can deal with manually deleting files, the crashing was getting annoying. Last night it cost me well over an hour worth of time in getting the comic up.

Anyways, all sorts of fun stuff to do today. Gotta finish prepping all the new stuff for the megagear store - the Boo army should be here very soon and i’ve got to have everything ready to go for when they do. Whee

- pirotunes: Fear Of The Heavens from “the Secret Of Mana - Original Sound Track” -

One of the things that i both love and despise about live journals is the ‘mood’ setting that you can add to each post. The number of ‘moods’ you can choose from is remarkable, and a real testament to how complex the mood swing structure of the average human being can be. I think people tend to do either two things - they use the same small set of moods to describe how they are doing (for me, lets see, i could always use ‘gloomy’ and ’sullen’ or something like that) and then there are those that try for a new mood every time they post, seemingly showing a bizarre and multi-faceted multi-polar nature that would land most people in a padded room. I debated having such things on my MT rants a while ago, and i decided that there was one problem with it - the last thing i want is people knowing my each and every mood swing.

Of course, people are already convinced i’m some kind of emo sad-sack gothy-brained nutjob (which is pretty close to the truth much of the time) but i don’t want to provide trackable proof of it

Anyways, all that said, i am suffering from a rather quixotic mood today which is not a bad thing to be suffering from when creating stuff. Fall is coming, one of my favorite times of year, so that could have something to do with it.

- pirotunes: Dilate - Shapeshifter -

I have been amazingly sluggish in getting myself going this morning. Could be the nice weather, it could just be some relief from feeling that MT is flowing again - this makes no one happier than me. What i managed to forget to do yesterday, of course, was something i had promised to do for Hawk, and then i totally screwed up the advertising on the MT site - again… I guess i’m never going to change, am i? I also have to finish that Otakon rant and finish pulling all of those pictures together. Labor day indeed. Well, it’s fun stuff, i guess

The first thing i am going to do this morning, however, is finish my Katrina relief information page. Since the relief effort for this is going to be ongoing for a very long time, and i do worry that once it disappears off the TV screens and stops providing them footage that they can use to make deep, emotive photographic montages set to stirring music, that people will will feel everything is ok and not realize that help will be needed for a very long time. Also, there are a lot of smaller things people and companies are doing, and i figure it’d be nice to be able to just provide some info to readers so they can do something if they feel like it.

So, i’m off to finish that up. On a minor note, i did all of monday’s comic on my 12″ powerbook - scanning, clean up, assembly - i was at Old Home and just didn’t feel llike going into teh factory. It’s really bizzare going from a 23″ ACD screen to a 12″ powerbook screen. You learn to appreciate ’screen real estate’. Well, you can’t beat the powerbook for portability.

Final note - Tomoyo Again - It’s a wonderful life hit’s streets in november, but there is a AVI demo film for it that was on the DVD they were handing out at Comiket. Also of note is a new Lia tune for the OP called Light Colors. yes, i’m a softie for Lia, and it’s a damn nice tune. I hate Key, have i said that before? Honestly, the art style of Tomoyo After seems a little off to me, but i’m curious about the story. Also, note that this isn’t an all ages game like Clannad is. ^^;; And, of course, while grabbing URLS for this i note that there are two new Clannad CDs out too - an Image album and a Remix album. Bastards.

Ok, back to work.

- pirotunes: Light colors (short) from Tomoyo After ™`It’s a Wonderful Life™` original demo movie” -

Not really a very good sketch, but it is one of the more cute examples of Kimiko in her glasses. I debated whether to ever actually show her in glasses - at least, not for a while, but in some ways im trying to show us getting a litte more exposed to kimiko’s private thoughts, and as we do this we will see a little more of kimiko the way she is, not just the way Piro, and the public, percieve her. Lots of subtle stuff about perception and sight going on in Megatokyo, i’m just hoping that it comes together the way i envision it when all is said and done. It’s blurry enough as it is

Click here to view the sketch

If i put aside my apprehension, worries and concerns about the effect the hurricane is having on everyone in the southern gulf states, I think i’m doing pretty good. I’ve been doing a lot of sketching, and my ideas have been forming fairly well. I plan to spend some time today finishing up some more scripts and do some development on some other projects as well. In fact, Seraphim and I are going to go see a movie tonight (either Brothers Grimm or the Constant Gardener - both are supposed to be decent movies, the Constant Gardener the better of the two…).

As for anime, i’ve been catching up on things, and i even managed to finish Rozen Maiden, a disturbingly good anime, and one that was obviously lovingly crafted by people with doll fetishes It’s kinda creepy, but in a good way. Like i said, Gin-chan Pwnz us all, even my 12″ powerbook desktop A new season of Rozen Maiden, called Rozen Maiden Traumend starts on October 10th. Other things i’ve been watching a little of, and i’ll catch up on over time include Shuffle!, Kamichu, Petopeto-san, Tsukiyomi Moon Phase (yes, finally catching up on that), the last few eps of Mahoraba (i feel like i’m saving those) Pani Poni Dash… more than enough for now. Watching stuff is good because it helps stimulate my own creativity. I’ve found that when i go a long time without any entertainment input, my writing gets kinda stale. Of course, too much and i can’t think about my own stories… so it’s a balancing act.

But like i said, much of this is still overshadowed by how i feel about what’s going on down south. I’ve even received several emails from readers who are from the area - one tells me that he doesn’t even know if everything he owns has been washed away or taken by looters. Its heartbreaking to hear this from readers, from people who you have some connection with. Seraphim and I are doing what we can, but there is also one other thing i take comfort in, and have taken comfort in through many of the difficult times i’ve seen this country go through in recent years - I may not be able to do much to change the world or make things better, but the one thing i can do is entertain people and maybe make them smile or feel good for just a few moments as they read my stuff. It’s not much, but it is something.

I have several emails from some webcomic people who are gathering together to raise money for the victims, i’m going to try to get to those today and see what i can do to help.

- pirotunes: RebeL9 - The Elysian Fields -

Ok, not too many people screaming for my head or threatening to no longer read Megatokyo any more on account of non story related content Yet i have to say, after August, i really REALLY owe you people an unbroken stream of story comics for a good long while, and i’m going to make it a priority to do so.

Seraphim really has done a lot of research and work on seeing what we can do to offer products that may have a little less impact on the environment. There’s no way you can be totally ‘green’ and people and companies that over do it tend to go a little overboard, which we think turns a lot of general consumers off. What works best, we feel, is a reasonable level of some kind of awareness that can help out in small ways, and if nothing else gets people to think about such things. I know i’m going to get (and have received already) some general bitching about using Megatokyo to preach ‘messages’ to people and how they dont come here for this kinda bullshit, that they are getting frustrated with the slow progress of chapter 7 so far. My answer to them us - tough shit. This is something Sarah worked very hard on and is important to her, and i wasn’t going to blow off all of her hard work just because i have had trouble getting Chapter 7 up to speed this month.

That said, after i take care of some things here i am going to see about getting some new sketches up here on fredart, and start moving forward on other story related things. Most of you have been very supportive of everything we do here at MT, and you have no idea how much Sarah and I appreciate it.

- pirotunes: Komatta Shumi from Rozen Maiden Original Soundtrack” -

Well, here’s a fun one for you - Friday’s comic won’t be a story based comic but is a stand alone comic Seraphim and I planned several months ago to coincide with some things we were doing with the store. Gah, I had almost forgot about doing it here at the end of the month ^^;;. It’s part of something seraphim has been working on for several months, so we’re gonna stick to plan. I have boffed things a little by missing several comics in the past two weeks that i had not planned on missing, and I apologize for the hiccup this month has been in chapter 7. The most amusing thing about this dilemma is that i’ve already started the next story comic and could easily have it done on schedule tonight. The irony of this is amusing to no end.

Well, what the hell. So i am getting ahead without even planning to. Maybe that’s a good thing. The comic we have planned is informative and amusing, and ties in with some things we are going to be doing with the store. I’ll try to get a new rant and some sketches and stuff posted tonight as well. Whee.

The upshot is - starting monday i’m well set up to keep a 3 comic per week schedule and get this almost stalled chapter rolling. August was kind of a mess, and i feel bad about it, but from here on out i think i can easily get back into my 3 per week schedule of attempted comic goodness.

- pirotunes: Yu Miyake - WANDA WANDA from “Katamari Damacy Soundtrack “Katamari Fortissimo Damacy”" -